Process for cleaning and splitting particle-containing fluid with an adjustable cyclone separator

Claim 1

In a reaction process in which particle-containing hot gas exhausting from a reactor is quenched to a temperature at which the particles become susceptible to cyclonic separation by mixing the hot gas with a relatively cool and particle-free gas, an improvement comprising: quenching the hot reactor exhaust gas and flowing the quenched gas tangentially into a cyclone having a generally cylindrical vortex chamber with a particle-depleted fluid outflow opening near one end and a particle-enriched outflow opening near the other end, and an intermediately located vortex stabilizing means having an externally controllable means for adjusting the distance between the stabilizing means and the particle-depleted outflow opening; and adjusting the distance between the particle-depleted fluid outflow opening and the vortex stabilizer means in a frequency, and to an extent required for adjusting the volume and particle concentration of the particle-depleted fluid so that it provides a stream of fluid capable of serving as at least a substantial proportion of the quenching gas which is mixed with hot reactor exhaust gas; and thus, the cyclonic operation provides a cleaning and stream-splitting valving operation that minimizes the eroding of stream-splitting elements.